Earlier this summer saw a brief but intense media debate about the
alleged existence of a “new offensiveness” in comedy. Although the
extent of various individuals’ involvement in this development is open
to argument, it seems to me unquestionable that popular culture has
coarsened over the last 10–15 years, resulting in a climate where
humiliation and scorn are common currency, whether in talent/reality
TV, celebrity-led tabloid journalism or indeed comedy. What I did not
expect was to find myself reacting with such strong negativity to Ed
Byrne, usually considered one of the more amiable top-flight stand-ups
in these islands.

The main thesis of the Dublin-born comic’s show (which he has been
touring for over a year now and which plays two weeks in the West End
to coincide with its DVD release) is that he doesn’t quite fit in as
either working-class or middle-class. He shapes the material well, from
the early put-it-this-way gag that his family was neither rich enough
nor poor enough to own a horse. Also fecund sources of material are his
wedding last year and a series of musings upon l’esprit d’escalier responses. But
it was here that I began to feel uneasy, a feeling that intensified
rather than dissipating.

Put baldly, all the female characters who appear to any significant
extent in his first-half material are objects of hostility, be they
self-aggrandising footballers’ WAGs, the women’s society at his old
university or a drunk woman in a bar in Cork. He ostensibly sides with
the cause of feminism (imagining the ghost of suffragette martyr Emily
Davison wanting to beat up those over-earnest students), but what kind
of support is it to give only negative examples of the sex? He also
notes, “I’m a bloke; we don’t like anyone thinking we’re too nice”, but
surely being aware of this impulse and still indulging it counts as an
aggravating rather than a mitigating factor. And of course, the
material is masterfully crafted for maximum comic impact, but
craftsmanship is no excuse either. Even his second-half praise of his
wife is dissipated when he goes into a crassly reactionary riff about
her snoring. Byrne is, as I say, hugely likeable in character, which
makes this experience all the more of an unpleasant surprise... like
looking at an apple before taking a second bite and finding not a worm
but half a worm.